Adding New Habits Is Easy With This Simple Technique

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With the new year fast approaching it’s likely you’ll want to add some new habits into your life. With this simple technique adding habits into your life because really easy and almost automatic.

0:20 – The Idea: Habit Stacking
2:30 – Another tip: Habit tracking
4:00 – You’re likely habit stacking anyway
5:02 – Key tip: Make your habits less than 2 minutes
6:48 – Don’t try to overhaul your entire life. Focus on getting just 1% better
8:24 – What habits are you going to stack into your life?

Recommended Videos:
How To Pay Off Credit Card Debt Faster – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7O_yWpV6wE

Transcription:

Going into a new year, chances are you want to add some new habits into your life, and this is one of the best ways that I’ve found to add new habits into my life and it comes out of the cold atomic habits, which I’ll link in the description down below, and no, it’s not brushing your teeth or doing pushups. It’s this idea called habit stacking. If you want to add a new habit into your life, take a habit that already exists and add the new habit directly after it. So the idea is that you take something that you already do repetitively every single day or every single week, and then you add your new habit directly after that. For example, right now my bed is made every single morning I get out of bed. Without fail, you may not believe it, but every single morning I get out of bed. That is a habit that I already do, so now I have it stack and on top of that I make my bed directly after I get out of bed, so I’m already getting out of bed.

That’s the trigger to then do the next habit, which is to make my bed after that I brushed my teeth, which you saw at the start of this video, and then after I brush my teeth, I do my pushups. Then after I’ve done those things and only then will I go downstairs and make my coffee. That’s another way to improve your habit. Stacking success and ensure that you stick with something is that after you do the habits that you should do the things that are gonna add value into your life. Then you reward yourself with something that you do want. So after I get up, make my bed, brush my teeth, do my pushups, then I get to reward myself with a coffee, but it’s not that I need to remember to do these things because I’m stacking these habits on top of things I already do.

I don’t really need to remember them and it has an added benefit. For example, brushing my teeth, which I do twice a day, sometimes three times a day, I really like having fresh breath is that that will then be a trigger for me to do some exercise, so in the morning it might be pushups in the night, it might be sit ups. If for some example, I’m having a crazy morning with the kids and I don’t actually get time to do my exercise in the morning after I brush my teeth. Well in the night I’m going to be triggered to do that habit again because I’ll brush my teeth again. I’ll be triggered to do some pushups or some sit ups or some form of exercise. Here’s another tip as well, and it’s called habit tracking, so this is tracking your habits. Now this may just look like two espresso cups and it is, but these are special cups, actually have queens in them.

Now this is the not done Espresso Cup and this is the done Espresso Cup. I’ve got five and ten cent coins in here which represent two different activities I do for my business, the five cents a videos created, so I’m doing daily videos and when they completely done, I’m over coin from this Cup into this cup. The ten cents are articles that I create for other websites, so when I create an article, then I moved ten cents over into this cup and this is just gives you a visual representation each week or each day of how you’re going with your habits. The story that comes out of the book atomic habits is that a salesperson had a jar of paperclips and it had 120 paper clips in it and every time they made a sales call that move a paperclip from one to the other, so you can employ this in any part of your life with any habit that you’re trying to do, is that you move from one side to another.

There’s probably would be better if they were glass so they will see through, but just really cool way and really visual and kinetic way. I don’t know if that’s the right word, tactile way of tracking it, so rather than just tracking it on paper, which I do as well, just having that visual representation of tracking your habits has been really helpful. Before I started consciously habit stacking in my life, I was doing it anyway because each morning I would get up. I wouldn’t necessarily make my bed or do pushups or anything like that, but I would make coffee because I absolutely love coffee. I’m a bit of a coffee snob. I love the taste. I love the caffeine. Uh, but what I would do is that each morning I would make my coffee and then I will take my vitamins or the medicine that I needed to take and I would take it very naturally after my coffee to the point where if the morning happened and I didn’t have my morning coffee, I would forget to take my supplements or my medicine.

So this something you might already be doing in your life, but you can take this concept and you can actually use it to make your life better. So when I was just naturally having a coffee and doing that, now when I just naturally brush my teeth or when I naturally have a copy or if there’s other things in your life that you naturally do every single day, look at a way to stack a habit on top of that. Rewarding yourself after completing your habits that are going to improve your life is really good. But another key tip that’s really helped me is breaking down your habits into something less than two minutes. And sometimes you might have a habit that’s go for a run. And if you’re training to run a marathon like I am, that’s going to take longer than two minutes. So how do I change that habit down into something that I do that is less than two minutes.

So for me, going for a run means changing into my running clothes by changing into my running clothes. I’m already deciding to go for a run. So that’s a habit that takes less than two minutes. But the actions after that habit come really naturally. Once I put my running clothes on, I’m basically committed to going for a run. It’s very easy then to hop in my car, drive down to the beach, which is a couple of minutes away, and then go for a run which is going to take me half an hour to an hour of training depending on the day, so even though that’s a decent chunk of my time, the habit of just getting into my running clothes and getting my case is a habit that’s less than two minutes. The same with making my bed and the same with doing pushups. They’re less than two minute habits and so those ones are really easy to stick versus the habits that are longer.

So it’d be going to start habit stacking. Don’t start with habits that take an extremely long period of time. Break it down into something that’s less than two minutes. If you want to meditate, meditating for longer than two minutes will be great, but maybe start with meditating for just one or two minutes after you drink your coffee, after you brush your teeth, whatever it may be, and then get into the habit of that and then naturally you can extend that once the habits already there often to try and get better. We try and overhaul our entire lives and be completely better people instantly. But rather than doing that, just focus on little improvements in your life. Focus on improving yourself by one percent. Get just one percent better, so add a little habit into your life that’s going to improve you by a small amount. Do that regularly, and then improve yourself again by one percent and then again by one percent and then again an overtime.

You’re going to have a very different life too if you didn’t improve your life constantly. So for me, improving my habits is going to be a big thing. Moving into the new year at starting with health and with doing things that are healthier, but it’s going to progress to financial habits, into business habits and marketing habits and things that are going to build my wealth long term as well. So as I stack these smaller habits together, I’m starting with the easiest ones. Once they’re in place, then I’ll add more so I’m not trying to do too much all at once and just improving my life by a little bit and then once I get into that new habit or improve it by a little bit again a little bit again a little bit. Again, if you improve yourself by one percent over the previous day, and if you do that every day for a year, you effectively become about 37 or 38 times better by the end of the year.

Now the, you know the numbers that aren’t going to match up exactly, but that idea of constantly just improving yourself a little bit at a time really adds up. So go ahead and try this habit stacking approach in your life and let me know in the comments down below what habit your going to stack into your life. So what’s the regular thing that you do? Is it waking up? Isn’t brushing your teeth? Is it drinking coffee? What is it? What’s the regular thing you do in your life? And what’s the habit that you’re going to stack on? Top of that, I want to hear from you down in the comment section down below. Let me know how you go. One thing you might want to do in the new year is to pay off some credit card debt. So go ahead and check out this video on how to pay off your credit card debt easier and faster, or go to on-property dot com dot EU slash five slash seven slash two, which is that episode. And I’ll link it down below as well. Thanks so much for watching. I wish you the best with the habits in your life and until next time, stay positive.